NSW budget 2014 | 'Ward sells out region'

Labor candidate for Kiama Glenn Kolomeitz said the Liberal’s state budget had “sold out the area”.

Labor candidate for Kiama Glenn Kolomeitz said the Liberal’s state budget had “sold out the area”.

Labor candidate for Kiama Glenn Kolomeitz said the Liberal’s state budget had “sold out the area”.

“This was a Sydney centric budget and the local community was left out,” he said.

“The Liberals have followed Tony Abbott’s lead in health and education - $50 million had been cut from school infrastructure, which will hit our local region the hardest.

“Even the AMA said the health budget was half a billion short of what it needed to keep going.

“People in Kiama are already feeling the affects of Tony Abbott’s broken promises and now Mike Baird and Gareth Ward are doing nothing about it.

“Gareth Ward is not standing up for our area and Liberal cuts are hardest to schools, hospitals and TAFEs in the region.

“Albion Park was hit twice in the budget – there was no improvement for railway services on the South Coast line, or at Albion Park in particular, and there was hardly anything for the Albion Park Rail bypass.

“Yet the Berry bypass had blown out by $70 million and Gareth Ward will not tell us why.”

Mr Kolomeitz said worse was yet to come as the Liberal’s plan to privatise electricity poles and wires would only mean an increase in electricity bills.

“Gareth Ward says ‘trust me’, but the evidence is there, electricity prices will rise,” he said.

“Private enterprise is only in these things to make money.

“A rise in electricity prices, as happened in South Australia when it was privatised, would again only hit families from our region in the back pocket.”